SAWS President and CEO Robert Puente listens during a joint CPS and SAWS board meeting on Sept. 21, 2022. The two city-owned utilities agreed to work together on adding generators at the water utility’s pump stations. The generators will ensure SAWS can continue to move water through the city during power outages, and CPS will be able to use sell energy from the generation at other times.
Robin Jerstad
CPS President and CEO Rudy Garza speaks during a joint CPS and SAWS board meeting on Sept. 21, 2022. The two city-owned utilities agreed to work together on adding generators at the water utility’s pump stations. The generators will ensure SAWS can continue to move water through the city during power outages, and CPS will be able to use sell energy from the generation at other times.
Robin Jerstad, San Antonio Express-News
SAWS will spend $155 million on backup power generators
Published: Wed, 12/06/23
SAWS will spend $155 million on backup power generators
The generators will be able to power pump stations in the event of a major power outage, such as happened during the February 2021 winter storm.
San Antonio Express-News
By Liz Teitz, Staff writer
San Antonio Water System is moving forward with plans to spend more than $150 million on installing backup generators at the city’s pump stations, the result of state legislation that followed the February 2021 winter storm.
The city-owned utility’s board of trustees voted Tuesday to approve a contract for $155 million to Wampole-Miller Inc. to install natural gas generators at pump stations.
The generators are part of SAWS’ Emergency Preparedness Plan. The plan was required by laws put in place by the Texas Legislature in 2021. The new regulations required utilities to submit plans to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality detailing how they would ensure a minimum water pressure of 20 pounds per square inch “as soon as safe and practicable following the occurrence of a natural disaster.”
The details of the plan are confidential because it contains sensitive information, SAWS Operations Support Engineering Manager Saqib Shirazi told the utility’s board, but it includes generators, electrical equipment and other accessories at multiple water production facilities.
The contract with Wampole-Miller includes more than $93 million for the installation of the generators and $62 million for purchasing the equipment from Enchanted Rock Electric, which was selected as the vendor for the project in January.
Construction on the generator project will take more than a year and a half to complete, according to Shirazi’s presentation.
SAWS and CPS Energy, the city-owned electric utility, have partnered on the project. SAWS will only need to use the generators as backups in case of a power outage, so CPS will be able to use them and sell the power generated during normal times. CPS will operate and maintain the generators, and some of the revenue from the sale of the power will come back to SAWS to offset the cost of purchase and installation.
At a utility conference in October, SAWS CEO Robert Puente and CPS CEO Rudy Garza addressed the project, calling it an opportunity to work together.
The February 2021 winter storm that struck Texas combined to create “probably the most challenging event I’ve ever been through” Garza said.
A record run of winter weather descended on Texas from Feb. 11-20, 2021, with snow, ice and freezing temperatures driving the state’s power grid to the brink of a total failure. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the entity that oversees the grid, ordered CPS and other utilities to shut down some of their operations to prevent the grid’s collapse. Some Texans were without power for more than a week, and a number of deaths were blamed in part on the winter weather event. The lack of electricity also prevented some municipal water systems from being able to provide water for their customers.
The situation “was a real challenge because on top of the rotating outage situation going on with ERCOT, at a scale nobody in the industry had ever seen, we also found ourselves in a water crisis,” Garza said. But looking back at that experience, they saw an opportunity to improve the water system’s resiliency and create a power generation for CPS, Garza said.
Puente said the water utility isn’t an expert in power generation, so it made sense to team up with CPS on the project. “All we know is our biggest bill every month goes to Rudy,” he joked during the panel.
SAWS projects it will need the backup generators only once every five to 10 years during a serious storm, Puente said.
“In the meantime, let’s run them and sell that energy,” he said. “So we teamed up together to do that and hopefully some of the power that is sold and revenue that comes in will help offset that $200 million we have to spend.”
During Tuesday’s meeting, Terry Burns, former chairman of the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club, said the purchase of natural gas generators will contribute to pollution and climate change, and said new technology will make the generators outdated soon.
“It’s a sad day for ratepayers and citizens of San Antonio,” he said.
Board President Jelynne LeBlanc Jamison said the partnership with CPS gives SAWS some relief, and said there aren’t alternatives that can be used at the utility’s scale to meet the state requirements.
“We sought to get the best value possible for our customers with the deal that we have with CPS Energy,” she said.